Buying a new video card to replace my 7870 - Going with an R9 390

[moonbogg]

Used aftermarket 290x. I don't see much else making as much sense at that price.

 

[slag]

Used aftermarket 290x. I don't see much else making as much sense at that price.

I found enough to get an R9 390. Going to pick one up tonight I think.

 

[Techhog]

Would a 430 antec earthwatt be enough for an R9 390?

No. I wouldn't go above a 960 with that.

 

[RussianSensation]

you can find a custom gtx 960 as low as $159,

960 for $159 is the 2GB version. It's DOA on arrival because 2GB is a major bottleneck for 1080P already.

In GameGPU's recent testing of Batman AK, high textures could not be used on 2GB cards.

Even if you try to force it, the performance hit is massive. 280X 3GB beats 770 2GB by 48% and beats 680 2GB by 61%.

Sorry, the writing is on the wall -- 2GB cards are DOA; and it's especially a waste of $ to go from an HD7870 2GB to a GTX960 2GB.

It's time that gamers start really paying attention to this because I see this being ignored and 960 2GB keeps getting recommended. :thumbsdown:

That means the only cards worth considering are 3GB+ which means $190 R9 280X, 4GB R9 380 or 4GB GTX960 - minimum.

so the r9 390 have almost double the price...no wonder its faster...the gtx 960 is a new gpu with alot of new features,

What are these features? HDMI 2.0? Worthless unless one has a 4K HDTV. HEVC 4K video decoding? How many people watch 4K video? None of these help the OP with gaming performance over his HD7870. GTX960 is not a real upgrade over a 7870.

you can overclock it easily at 1500mhz and with little voltage increase even 1600mhz, which would give you around r9 280x performance.

Ya but 2GB is an anchor on the card so it's basically worthless to keep for 2-3 years. That means we are really looking at $200 GTX960 4GB and at that point the card is also a waste of $ because R9 290 is $240. For $40 more, it's 50%+ faster.

However, what you keep ignoring is the OP's context. It goes like this:

1080P
HD7870 -> GTX960 = +22% more performance for $200 (i.e., $9.09 for each 1% increase in performance)
HD7870 -> R9 290 = +78% more performance for $240 (i.e, $3.08 for each 1% increase in performance)
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_960_SLI/23.html

That means an R9 290 has 3X better price/performance for the OP to upgrade from an HD7870. Even if we use 960 2GB for $160, that's still a horrible price/performance upgrade from an HD7870.

i would recommend you to get the gtx 960 and then eventually upgrade next year when new gen gpu's will arrive, they are going to be alot faster so its not worth getting a big expensive gpu right now...

What would that accomplish? $160-200 flushed into the toilet. R9 290/390/970 is a real upgrade from a 7870 and it's not as if the OP cannot sell his 290/390/970 in 18 months+ should he desire more performance. 960 2GB is DOA and you keep ignoring this every time you recommend it. With games like Fallout 4 (mods) and GTA V (mods) and Skyrim (mods), buying a 2GB card in late 2015 is not wise. We have seen what happens to VRAM crippled cards in the past with X1900XT 256MB, 8800GT 256MB, 8800GTS 320MB and 5870 1GB and GTX470/570 1.28GB.

I found enough to get an R9 390. Going to pick one up tonight I think.

Sapphire Nitro 390 is $295 on Newegg. You get double ball bearing fans, and an excellent cooler.

 

[guskline]

I found enough to get an R9 390. Going to pick one up tonight I think.

GOOD move!

 

[tential]

The gtx 770 was the biggest joke of a video card in awhile but well people will do stupid things. I'm happy I got a 290 for $200. 390 new just didn't make sense to me.

 

[RussianSensation]

The gtx 770 was the biggest joke of a video card in awhile but well people will do stupid things. I'm happy I got a 290 for $200. 390 new just didn't make sense to me.

Ya, if someone can find a used Sapphire Tri-X 290 for $180-200, it's a sweet deal. It's amazing how low the used prices on those cards are considering a new GTX960 2GB is $160 with 50% less performance. Negative perception killed 290/290X cards, unfortunately.

GTX770 2GB wasn't that bad once its priced dropped to $330 but ya compared to a $299 R9 280X, it was still a bad buy. NV marketing though....

GTX770 4GB for $400-450 was a big joke though. I feel bad for anyone who bought those cards because that was literally a waste of $.

For its time though, GTX770 was still decent. OTOH, millions of PC gamers are buying GTX950/960 and those cards are just terrible. It's interesting how none of the North American review sites is willing to go on record and discuss GTX960 2GB's VRAM issues/limitations seen in some AAA games and none of them is calling out that GTX960 is the worst x60 series to have come out from NV in the last 5 generations.

GTX760 = 100% (June 25, 2013)
GTX960 = 114%
http://www.computerbase.de/2015-03/geforce-gtx-460-560-660-760-960-vergleich/2/

That's just insane. Based on GTX960's popularity on Steam, it clearly shows that most PC gamers are uninformed and just follow marketing. Even going back to Sept 13, 2012 GTX660, 960 is just 44% faster. 3 years to get 44% more performance in a x60 series card. How pathetic is that?

Recommending GTX960 for gaming today is akin to recommending HD7770 for gaming over GTX560Ti/HD6950/GTX570 sighting its more advanced architecture, features and superior perf/watt. Anyone on this forum would have laughed at the idea of recommending a 50-60% slower HD7770 over these older more powerful cards but here we were since January 2015, GTX960 is not only recommended, it sold like hot cakes.

 

[happy medium]

I found enough to get an R9 390. Going to pick one up tonight I think.

should have gotten this overclocked, triple fan cooled gigabyte geforce gtx 970 g1 gaming 4gb with backplate,
for the same price.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125684

 

[Headfoot]

The 960 should have been the 950. The 960 4gb should have been the 950 Ti. The 970 should have been the 960 and the 980 should have been the 960 Ti. They cashed in the goodwill on the x60 name. The marketing reality distortion field is so strong that even though the 960 is indisputably the worst x60 chip vis a vis its position in the line up compared to other x60 chips vis a vis their positions in their lineups, that the x60 line up will still keep its good name even after its now been squandered.

But because they wanted to get x60 prices for x50 level chips, we now have terribly misleading named products. Like how the 980 Ti is much, much better than the 980. When you move all the bottom chips up a name without actually making them as good as the name would suggest, you run out of headroom at the top. Thus 980 Ti which is nothing like a 980 and a new $1000 rip off name Titan X

 

[iiiankiii]

should have gotten this overclocked, triple fan cooled gtx970 with backplate,
for the same price.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125684

I wouldn't get the GTX 970 when a 390 is faster overall even against an overclocked GTX 970. Honestly, the R9 390 is a better deal than the GTX 970 at this point.

 

[kawi6rr]

should have gotten this overclocked, triple fan cooled gigabyte geforce gtx 970 g1 gaming 4gb with backplate,
for the same price.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125684

No way! The 390 has much more future proof with more ram and updated driver support from AMD along with direct X 12 coming.

 

[happy medium]

I wouldn't get the GTX 970 when a 390 is faster overall even against an overclocked GTX 970. Honestly, the R9 390 is a better deal than the GTX 970 at this point.

no it is not, especially with a factory overclocked gtx970.
the gtx970 is as fast as a 390x with a slight factory overclocked. The version I linked is one of the best gtx970's.

latest charts.

1440p with the factory overclock it fits right in between the 390 and 390x.

 

[slag]

I'm going to get this one.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/xfx-amd...gray/8278117.p?id=1219690434699&skuId=8278117

Dual dissipation, unlocked voltage in case I want to mess around with overclocking, lifetime warranty, and I have 10 bucks off because of the best buy rewards club. I think the lifetime warranty makes it worth the few extra bucks.

http://xfxforce.com/en-us/products/...radeon-r9-390-double-dissipation-r9-390a-8dfr

 

[happy medium]

No way! The 390 has much more future proof with more ram and updated driver support from AMD along with direct X 12 coming.

who told you this? prove it! Link me to the better driver direct x 12 games chart. and the ram is worthless unless you plan on crossfiring them. We all know this.

 

[RussianSensation]

no it is not, especially with a factory overclocked gtx970.
the gtx970 is as fast as a 390x with a slight factory overclocked. The version I linked is one of the best gtx970's.

latest charts.

Those charts are heavily skewed to favour NV because they include:

- Project CARS - a massive outlier since the game was practically coded/made for NV cards

- Wolfenstein - their benchmark contradicts many other reviews that show great perfomrance for AMD cards but yet they continue to include it. Everyone who did their research knows that TPU's Wolfenstein benchmark is misleading and should be removed. They have been called out on this but they refuse to do anything about it.

http://us.hardware.info/reviews/547...sted-on--32-gpus-benchmarks-full-hd-1920x1080
http://us.hardware.info/reviews/547...--32-gpus-benchmarks-triple-full-hd-5760x1080
http://us.hardware.info/reviews/547...on--32-gpus-benchmarks-ultra-hd--4k-3840x2160

Expansion:

So let's see who to believe -- GameGPU that tested both the original game and the expansion and has videos of the benchmark up on their website OR TPU that refuses to discuss Wolfenstein's benchmark?

- WOW - in a non-raided scenario - the bench is heavily skewed to favour NV but yet isn't representative of real world gaming experience in WOW

- TPU does not use Mantle for any games that benefit from it on the AMD side.

^^ Take those 3 games out (one of which is a flawed benchmark) and 970 loses as has been shown by many reviews:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37707486&postcount=8

Computerbase tested 18 games and 390 beats GTX 970 OC at 1080P HQ and at 1440P HQ:
http://www.computerbase.de/2015-09/...t/4/#diagramm-rating-2560-1440-hohe-qualitaet

970 also has less VRAM and based on NV's driver support of Kepler and early benchmarks of DX12, R9 390 8GB is easily the safer bet.

The main reasons to get GTX970 are NV specific features like TXAA or PhysX or if one is a heavy Project CARS, WOW player. Otherwise, R9 390 actually has more consistent average performance and when it wins, the wins are decent too.

Furthermore, imho because NV showed 0 remorse about GTX970's ROP/GDDR5 specs, and to this date they refuse to change the specifications on the GTX970 on the product's boxes to reflect that the card is only a 3.5GB @ 224GB/sec GDDR5 product, they don't deserve the sale if R9 390 and 970 cost similar, especially when R9 390 is at least as fast and comes with bonus 8GB of VRAM.

 

[happy medium]

I'm going to get this one.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/xfx-amd...gray/8278117.p?id=1219690434699&skuId=8278117

Double dissipation, unlocked voltage in case I want to mess around with overclocking, lifetime warranty, and I have 10 bucks off because of the best buy rewards club. I think the lifetime warranty makes it worth the few extra bucks.

http://xfxforce.com/en-us/products/...radeon-r9-390-double-dissipation-r9-390a-8dfr

326$? are you kidding? who keeps are is planning on keeping their card for more than say 3 years? New cards come out next year!

 

[happy medium]

Those charts are heavily skewed to favour NV because they include

wait so people don't play these popular games? We should just remove them?
Are you kidding me Russian? If more popular games run better on Nvidia cards so be it!
That's why you buy Nvidia cards, You don't buy AMD because soe popular games run better on Nvidia cards.

THe gtx 970 gaming G1 pre overclocked is the better faster card and when overclocked more, will smoke the 390.
That's a fact! and even cheaper than what the OP is picking at 336$ -10$.

 

[happy medium]

NV's driver support of Kepler and early benchmarks of DX12, R9 390 8GB is easily the safer bet.

more BS with nothing to prove your theory's. mabe if AMD would make NEW cards and stop rehashing the same SH!t ,they can move on and support their new cards. 8gb is worthless and you know it!

because NV showed 0 remorse and NV basically lied

SO based on your opinion of how a company runs it business we should choose how to spend our money? seriously! Dude get off your high horse. I don't care if a company robs a bank as long as it give me the performance I want for the price I'm willing to pay.

here is the facts . the gtx970 I linked is faster , just as cool, uses less power, is just as quiet ,will overclock better, is well made, and is the same price.

Now keep your wall of figures from every shill driven website that you keep in your favorites to yourself. because these are the facts.

 

[RussianSensation]

wait so people don't play these popular games? We should just remove them?
Are you kidding me Russian? If more popular games run better on Nvidia cards so be it!
That's why you buy Nvidia cards, You don't buy AMD because soe popular games run better on Nvidia cards.

I addressed this point in my post above:

"The main reasons to get GTX970 are NV specific features like TXAA or PhysX or if one is a heavy Project CARS, WOW player. Otherwise, R9 390 actually has more consistent average performance and when it wins, the wins are decent too."

The point you missed is that you used average performance from TPU by including a game where NV cards are 80-100% faster (Project CARS) which isn't even a popular racer and is a major outlier, WOW bench (that's not representative of the actual game because you'll never get 100+ in heavy raids -- I still acknowledged that 970 is better for WOW in my post above)) and most importantly a broken/wrong benchmark for Wolfenstein. You ignored all 3 of those points. So you are saying which should count benchmarks that make no sense?

Remove those 3 games and 970 clearly loses. This is why almost every other sites shows 390 beating 970. It's simple really.

THe gtx 970 gaming G1 pre overclocked is the better faster card and when overclocked more, will smoke the 390.
That's a fact! and even cheaper than what the OP is picking at 336$ -10$.

Wrong. JaysTwoCents already did benchmarks of max overclocked 390 vs. max overclocked 1500+mhz 970. 970 lost.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9cKZiJw6Pk

KitGuru, Guru3D, Computerbase, etc. all have R9 390 beating the 970.

Also, you clearly have not read this post from Guru3D's review. GTX970 is not going to smoke the 390. It's lucky to just keep up with a 390 once max overclocked in some games.

So not only does the 390 have more consistent performance, but it's a safer bet due to true 4GB of VRAM as minimum and DX12 support via its 8 ACE engines.

 

[happy medium]

No way! The 390 has much more future proof with more ram and updated driver support from AMD along with direct X 12 coming.

still waiting my proof of this BS too.

 

[happy medium]

JaysTwoCents

who? what? Jay 2 cents? now you are reaching man.

Guru3D, Computerbase, etc. all have R9 390 beating the 970

A pre overclocked gtx970? where ? more BS!.
Man a maxed overclocked gtx970 will = a gtx980 and will smoke a 390.

Why don't you use Tech powerup summary's any more Russian?
You used to link them all the time, now that AMD cards don't look so good , they are no longer good? So you have some new bias crap in your favorites?
I'm done here. type away my friend, type away!

 

[iiiankiii]

more BS with nothing to prove your theory's. mabe if AMD would make NEW cards and stop rehashing the same SH!t ,they can move on and support their new cards. 8gb is worthless and you know it!



SO based on your opinion of how a company runs it business we should choose how to spend our money? seriously! Dude get off your high horse. I don't care if a company robs a bank as long as it give me the performance I want for the price I'm willing to pay.

here is the facts . the gtx970 I linked is faster , just as cool, uses less power, is just as quiet ,will overclock better, is well made, and is the same price.

Now keep your wall of figures from every shill driven website that you keep in your favorites to yourself. because these are the facts.

The 390 is better, bro. Max OC vs Max OC, it doesn't matter. The 390 is faster unless all you do is play project cars. In that case, grab the 970.

GTX 970 3.5GB is good with low power consumption. Everybody knows more VRAM is boss, tho.

By the way, you're getting way too heated. Calm down.

 

[AtenRa]

Why don't you use Tech powerup summary's any more Russian?

Can you show me the MSI R9 390 Gaming against the Gigabyte 970 G1 in direct review from TPU ???

RS link above has an OC 390 vs OC 970, havent seen your data so far.

 

[RussianSensation]

who? what? Jay 2 cents? now you are reaching man.

Sure buddy, let's ignore KitGuru, Guru3D, Computerbase, Sweclockers.

A pre overclocked gtx970? where ? more BS!.

Look up the benchmarks at Computerbase = 970 OC loses to a stock 390.

Here is yet another review that shows that a 1367 Boosted 970 loses in 4 out of 5 games to a 1060mhz 390:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udXCusTnRsY

So no, a 970 is not smoking 390 on average. Stop making stuff up.

Man a maxed overclocked gtx970 will = a gtx980 and will smoke a 390.

390 can also overclock. Since a 1367 970 can't even beat a 1060mhz 390, even if 970 is overclocked to 1500mhz, an 1150-1200mhz 390 will still win.

Why don't you use Tech powerup summary's any more Russian?

I do use it but I don't ignore 5-6 other reviews all over the Internet. You did.

I provided so many other reviews that all show 390 > 970 and yet you keep clinging to the TPU review with 3 flawed benchmarks that show 970 in a much better light than it really is.

You used to link them all the time, now that AMD cards don't look so good , they are no longer good? So you have some new bias crap in your favorites?

No, I fully acknowledge the TPU review but I also look at many other reviews to figure out a general theme. Also, I've been using sites like Computerbase, Sweclockers, TechSpot, Guru3D, etc. for many years. Looking at 10+ reviews, TPU's review paints the GTX970 in a much more favourable light than it really is because the 3 benchmarks I refer to are heavily helping the 970.

I don't think you've read many reviews on the 390 online becuase you keep clinging to that one TPU review and ignoring 5-10 other reviews. You are also way overestimating how fast an after-market 970 is.

 

[happy medium]

The 390 is better, bro

why because you say so?
I'm not heated, this is nothing.

The 390 is faster unless all you do is play project cars

ANd this a stock gtx970, I linked a card that has a 11% overclock out of the box for the same price!
REALLY!

and again!

and Again!

and yet AGAIN!